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[[Image:Pcpnovote.jpg|thumb|right|Shining Path poster supporting an electoral boycott]]
[[Image:Pcpnovote.jpg|thumb|right|Shining Path poster supporting an electoral boycott]]
The '''Communist Party of Peru''' (in [[Spanish language|Spanish]]: ''El Partido Comunista del Perú''), more commonly known as the '''Shining Path''' (''Sendero Luminoso'') is a [[Maoism|Maoist]] [[guerrilla]] organization in [[Peru]]. Several other Peruvian parties have very similar names. The more familiar name originates from a maxim of [[José Carlos Mariátegui]], founder of the original [[Peruvian Communist Party]], "''El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución''" (“[[Marxism-Leninism]] will open the shining path to revolution”).<ref>Encyclopædia Britannica Online, "Shining Path." [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9067404 Available online], accessed [[September 10]], [[2006]].</ref> This maxim was featured in the masthead of the newspaper of a Shining Path [[front group]], and Peruvian communist groups are often distinguished by the names of their publications. The followers of the group are generally called ''senderistas''.
The '''Communist Party of Peru''' ([[Spanish language|Spanish]]: '''El Partido Comunista del Perú'''), more commonly known as the '''Shining Path''' ('''Sendero Luminoso''') is a [[Maoism|Maoist]] [[guerrilla]] organization in [[Peru]]. The more familiar name distinguishes the group from several other Peruvian communist parties with similar names (see [[Communism in Peru]]). It originates from a maxim of [[José Carlos Mariátegui]], founder of the original [[Peruvian Communist Party]]: "''El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución''" (“[[Marxism-Leninism]] will open the shining path to revolution”).<ref>Encyclopædia Britannica Online, "Shining Path." [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9067404 Available online], accessed [[September 10]], [[2006]].</ref> This maxim was featured in the masthead of the newspaper of a Shining Path [[front group]], and Peruvian communist groups are often distinguished by the names of their publications. The followers of the group are generally called ''senderistas''.


Shining Path's" stated goal is to replace Peruvian [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] institutions with a [[communism|communist]] peasant revolutionary regime, presumably passing first through the Maoist developmental stage of [[New Democracy (concept)|New Democracy]]. Since the capture of its leader [[Abimael Guzmán]] in [[1992]], it has only been sporadically active.{{fact}} Shining Path's ideology and tactics have been influential on other Maoist insurgent groups, notably the [[Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)]] and other [[Revolutionary Internationalist Movement]]-affiliated armed organizations.
Shining Path's" stated goal is to replace Peruvian [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] institutions with a [[communism|communist]] peasant revolutionary regime, presumably passing first through the Maoist developmental stage of [[New Democracy (concept)|New Democracy]]. Since the capture of its leader [[Abimael Guzmán]] in [[1992]], it has only been sporadically active.{{fact}} Shining Path's ideology and tactics have been influential on other Maoist insurgent groups, notably the [[Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)]] and other [[Revolutionary Internationalist Movement]]-affiliated armed organizations.

Revision as of 19:04, 23 September 2006

File:Pcpnovote.jpg
Shining Path poster supporting an electoral boycott

The Communist Party of Peru (Spanish: El Partido Comunista del Perú), more commonly known as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) is a Maoist guerrilla organization in Peru. The more familiar name distinguishes the group from several other Peruvian communist parties with similar names (see Communism in Peru). It originates from a maxim of José Carlos Mariátegui, founder of the original Peruvian Communist Party: "El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución" (“Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to revolution”).[1] This maxim was featured in the masthead of the newspaper of a Shining Path front group, and Peruvian communist groups are often distinguished by the names of their publications. The followers of the group are generally called senderistas.

Shining Path's" stated goal is to replace Peruvian bourgeois institutions with a communist peasant revolutionary regime, presumably passing first through the Maoist developmental stage of New Democracy. Since the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992, it has only been sporadically active.[citation needed] Shining Path's ideology and tactics have been influential on other Maoist insurgent groups, notably the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and other Revolutionary Internationalist Movement-affiliated armed organizations.

Widely condemned for its brutality, including violence deployed against peasants[citation needed], trade union organizers, popularly elected officials and the general civilian population[citation needed], Sendero is on the U.S. Department of State's "Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations" list.[2] Peru, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada[1] likewise regard Shining Path as a terrorist group and prohibit providing funding or other financial support.

Origins

Shining Path was founded in the late 1960s by former university philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán (also known as Presidente Gonzalo), whose teachings created the foundation for its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Peru — Bandera Roja ("red flag"), which in turn split from the original Peruvian Communist Party, a derivation of the Peruvian Socialist Party, founded by Jose Carlos Mariategui in 1964.

Shining Path first established a foothold in San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, where Guzmán taught philosophy. The university had recently reopened after being closed for about half a century, and many students of the newly-educated class adopted Shining Path's radical ideology. Between 1973 and 1975, Shining Path gained control of the student councils in the Universities of Huancayo and La Cantuta, and developed a significant presence in the University of Engineering in Lima and the National University of San Marcos, the oldest in Peru. Sometime later, it lost many student elections in the universities, including Guzmán's own San Cristóbal of Huamanga, and decided to abandon the universities and reconsolidate itself.

In the beginning of 1980, Shining Path held a series of clandestine meetings in Ayacucho, known as the Central Committee's second plenary. It formed a "Revolutionary Directorate" that was political and military, and ordered their militias to transfer to strategic areas in the provinces, to start the "armed struggle". The group also held its "First Military School" where militants were instructed in military tactics and weapons use. They also engaged in the "criticism and self-criticism", a Maoist practice intended to avoid repeating mistakes and purge bad habits of work. During the First Military School, members of the Central Committee came under heavy criticism, while Guzmán did not, and he emerged from the First Military School as the clear leader of Shining Path.

Guerrilla war

When Peru's military government allowed elections for the first time in a dozen years in 1980, Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part, and instead opted to launch a guerrilla war in the highlands of the province of Ayacucho. On May 17, 1980, the eve of the presidential elections, it burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho. It was the first act of war by Shining Path. However, the perpetrators were quickly caught, additional ballots were shipped to Chuschi, the elections proceeded without further incident, and the incident received very little attention in the Peruvian press.[3]

Throughout the 1980s, Shining Path grew in both the territory it controlled and the number of militants in its organization, particularly in the Andean highlands. It gained some support from peasants, by beating and killing widely disliked figures in the countryside.[citation needed] It often executed cattle rustlers, whose crime is considered particularly egregious in poor Peruvian villages.[citation needed] It also killed managers of the state-controlled farming collectives and well-to-do merchants, who were unpopular with poor rural dwellers.[citation needed] These actions caused the peasantry of many Peruvian villages to express some sympathy for the Shining Path, especially in the regions of Ayacucho, Apurímac, and Huancavelica. But only a small minority of peasants were ever as enthusiastically Maoist as the Shining Path cadre.[citation needed]

Shining Path's credibility was also bolstered by the government's initially tepid response to the insurgency. For a long time, the government simply ignored Shining Path, believing it to be relatively benign or, as press said in the first years, they were only "lunatics".[citation needed] Additionally, the civilian president Fernando Belaúnde Terry was reluctant to cede authority to the armed forces, as his first government had ended in a military coup. The result was that, to the peasants in the areas where the Shining Path was active, the state appeared impotent. When it became clear the Shining Path represented a threat to the state, the government declared an "emergency zone" in the Ayacucho area, and granted the military the power to arbitrarily arrest any suspicious person. The military used this power extremely heavy-handedly, detaining scores of innocent people, at times subjecting them to torture and rape. [citation needed] In several massacres, the military wiped out entire villages. Military personnel took to wearing black ski-masks to hide their identity as they committed these crimes.

Shining Path's attacks were not limited to the countryside. It mounted attacks against the infrastructure in Lima, killing civilians in the process.[citation needed] In 1983, it sabotaged several electrical transmission towers, causing a citywide blackout, and set fire to the Bayer industrial plant, destroying it completely. That same year, it set off a powerful bomb in the offices of the governing party, Popular Action. Escalating its activities in Lima, in June 1985 it again blew up electricity transmission towers in Lima, producing a blackout, and detonated car bombs near the government palace and the justice palace. It also started fires in several shopping malls.[citation needed] (At the time, President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was receiving the Argentine president Raúl Alfonsín.) In one of its last attacks, on 16 July 1992, the group detonated a powerful bomb on Tarata Street in the upscale district of Miraflores in Lima,[4] killing more than 20 people and destroying several buildings.

During this period, Shining Path also targeted specific individuals, notably leaders of other leftist groups, local political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations, some of whom were anti-Sendero Marxists.[citation needed] On 24 April 1985, in the midst of presidential elections, it tried to assassinate Domingo García Rada, the president of the Peruvian National Electoral Council, severely injuring him and mortally wounding his driver. In August 1991, the group killed one Italian and two Polish priests in the department of Ancash.[citation needed] It later blew up the bodies with dynamite.[citation needed] The following February, it assassinated María Elena Moyano, a well-known community organizer in Villa El Salvador, a vast shantytown in Lima.[5]

By 1991, Shining Path had control of much of the countryside of the center and south of Peru and had a large presence in the outskirts of Lima. As the organization grew in power, a cult of personality grew around Guzmán. The official ideology of Shining Path ceased to be Maoism (or "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought"), and was instead referred to as "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo thought."

Shining Path also engaged in armed conflicts with Peru's other major guerrilla group, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA)[6] with campesino self-defense groups organized by the Peruvian armed forces, and with legally-recognized parties of the Peruvian Left.[citation needed]

Although the extent of Shining Path atrocities and the reliability of reports remains a matter of controversy, the organization has been frequently accused of particularly brutal methods of killing.[citation needed]

Decline

While Shining Path quickly seized control of large areas of Peru, it soon faced serious problems. Shining Path's Maoism was never popular.[citation needed] It never had the support of the majority of the Peruvian people, and quickly lost almost all sympathy that it once had.[citation needed]

Many peasants were unhappy with its rule for many reasons,[citation needed] such as its disrespect for indigenous culture and institutions,[7] and the brutality of its "popular trials" that often included stoning,[citation needed] and sometimes scalping the head with a hammer and an axe.[citation needed] While punishing and even killing cattle thieves was popular in some parts of Peru, Shining Path also killed peasants and popular leaders for even minor offenses.[citation needed] Peasants were also offended by the rebels' injunction against burying the bodies of Shining Path victims for at least 24 hours.[citation needed]

Shining Path also became disliked for its policy of closing small and rural markets in order to end small-scale capitalism and to starve Lima.[8][9] As a Maoist organization, it strongly opposed all forms of capitalism,[citation needed] and also followed Mao's dictum that guerrilla warfare should start in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities. Peasants, many of whose livelihood depended on trade in the markets, rejected such closures.[citation needed]

In several areas of Peru, Shining Path also launched unpopular campaigns, such as a prohibition on parties[10] and the consumption of alcohol.

Most Marxist Peruvian political parties considered Shining Path's analysis -- that Peru was a semi-feudal nation analogous to China in the 1930s and 1940s -- as deeply flawed.[citation needed]

Faced with a hostile population, the guerrilla war began to falter.[citation needed] In some areas, peasants formed anti-Shining Path patrols, called rondas. They were generally poorly-equipped despite donations of guns from the armed forces. Nevertheless, Shining Path guerrillas were militarily attacked by the rondas. The such first reported attack was in January 1983 near Huata, when some rondas killed 13 senderistas; in February in Sacsamarca, rondas stabbed and killed the Shining Path commanders of that area. In March 1983, rondas brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of Lucanamarca. They took him to the town square, stoned him, stabbed him, set him on fire, and finally, shot him [11] As a response, in April, Shining Path entered the province of Huancasancos and the towns of Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua, Muylacruz and Lucanamarca, killing 69 people, many of them children, including at one who was only six months old.[12] Also killed were several women, some of them pregnant.[13] Most of them died by machete hacks, and some were shot at close range in the head[14] This was the first massacre by Shining Path of the peasant community. Other incidents followed, such as the one in Marcas on 28 August 2003. [15] [16]

Theodore Dalrymple in an article published September 6, 2006, states that "The worst brutality I ever saw was that committed by Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru, in the days when it seemed possible that it might come to power. If it had, I think its massacres would have dwarfed those of the Khmer Rouge. As a doctor, I am accustomed to unpleasant sights, but nothing prepared me for what I saw in Ayacucho, where Sendero first developed under the sway of a professor of philosophy, Abimael Guzman."

Government response and abuses

In 1991, President Alberto Fujimori issued a law[17] that gave the rondas a legal status, and from that time they were officially called Comités de auto defensa ("Committees of Self Defence"). They were officially armed, usually with 12-gauge shotguns, and trained by the Peruvian army. According to the government, there are approximately 7,226 comités de auto defensa;[18] almost 4,000 are located in the central region of Peru, the stronghold of Shining Path.

The Peruvian government also clamped down on the Shining Path in other ways. Military personnel were dispatched to areas dominated by Shining Path, especially Ayacucho, to fight the rebels. Ayacucho itself was declared an emergency zone, and constitutional rights were suspended in the area. The government also sent forces to take back an Ayacucho prison that had recently been taken over by its own incarcerated Shining Path members, using mortars (canons) and automatic weapons, killing at least 35 as family members watched. This was caught on film and shown in a documentary entitled People of the Shining Path.

Initial government efforts to fight Shining Path were not very effective or promising. Military units engaged in many human rights violations, which caused Shining Path to appear in the eyes of many as the lesser of two evils. They used excessive force and killed many innocent civilians. Government forces destroyed villages and killed campesinos suspected of supporting Shining Path. They eventually lessened the pace at which it committed atrocities such as massacres. Instead, the state used intelligence agencies. However, atrocities were committed by the National Intelligence Service, notably the La Cantuta massacre and the Barrios Altos massacre, both of which were committed by Grupo Colina.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) established by President Alejandro Toledo found in a 2003 report that 69,280 people had died or disappeared -- 22,507 fully identified as dead and 46,773 disappearances.[19] Shining Path was estimated to be responsible for the death of 31,331 people[20] According to a summary of the report by Human Rights Watch, "Shining Path… killed about half the victims, and roughly one-third died at the hands of government security forces… The commission attributed some of the other slayings to a smaller guerrilla group and local militias. The rest remain unattributed." The other major Peruvian guerrilla group during this period, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), was held responsible for 1.5% of the deaths.[21]

Capture of Guzmán and collapse

File:Abimael Guzman 6.jpg
Abimael Guzmán after his capture in 1992

On September 12, 1992, Peruvian police captured Guzmán and several Shining Path leaders in an apartment above a dance studio in the Santiago de Surco district of Lima. The police had been monitoring the apartment, as a number of suspected Shining Path militants had visited it. An inspection of the garbage of the apartment produced empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat psoriasis, a condition that Guzmán was known to have. Shortly after the raid that captured Guzmán, most of the remaining Shining Path leadership fell as well.[citation needed] At the same time, the Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to campesino self-defense organizations — supposedly its social base — and the organization fractured into splinter groups.[citation needed] Guzmán's role as the leader of Shining Path was taken over by Óscar Ramírez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999. After Ramírez's capture, the group splintered, guerrilla activity diminished sharply, and previous conditions returned to the areas where the Shining Path had been active.[citation needed]

21st century

Although the organization has virtually disappeared,[citation needed] a militant faction called Proseguir (or "Onward") continues to be sporadically active in the region of the Ene and Apurimac valleys on the eastern slopes of the Andes, some 300 miles southeast of Lima. It is believed that the faction consists of three companies known as the North, or Pangoa, the Centre, or Pucuta, and the South, or Vizcatan. According to the Peruvian government, the faction consists of around 100 hardliners from other (now disbanded) regional Shining Path units. The government claims that Proseguir is operating in alliance with drug traffickers.

The Proseguir faction has been blamed for an upsurge in guerrilla activity in the region during 2003. Government forces have had a number of successes in capturing its leading members. In April 2000, Commander José Arcela Chiroque, called "Ormeño", was captured, followed by another leader, Florentino Cerrón Cardozo, called "Marcelo" in July 2003. In November of the same year, Jaime Zuñiga, called "Cirilo" or "Dalton," was arrested after a clash in which four guerrillas were killed and an officer wounded.[22] Officials said he took part in planning the kidnapping in June of 71 workers of the Argentinean company Techint, who were working on a gas pipeline in the jungle. He was also thought to have led an ambush against an army helicopter in 1999 in which five soldiers died.

Pro-PCP graffiti in Stockholm, Sweden

On 9 June 2003 a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Tocache, Ayacucho, and took 68 employees of the Argentinian company Techint and three police guards as hostages. They had been working in the Camisea gas pipeline project, a gasoduct that would take natural gas from Cuzco to Lima.[23] According to sources from Peru's Interior Ministry, the terrorists asked for a sizable ransom to free the hostages. Two days later, after a rapid military response, the terrorists abandoned the hostages. According to rumor, the company paid the ransom.[24]

That year, the Peruvian National Police broke up several Shining Path training camps and captured many members and leaders.[citation needed] It also freed more than 200 indigenous people held in virtual slavery.[citation needed] For 2003, terrorist incidents amounted to 115 (a 15% decrease from the 134 kidnappings and armed attacks in 2002). Also for the year, 6 military and 3 private defense personnel were killed, and 6 Shining Path members were killed and 209 captured.[citation needed]

In January 2004, a man known as Comrade Artemio and identifying himself as one of the last free Shining Path leaders said in a media interview that the group will resume violent operations unless the Peruvian government granted amnesty to other top Shining Path leaders within 60 days.[25] Peru's Interior Minister, Fernando Rospigliosi, said that the government would respond "drastically and swiftly" to any violent action. In September that same year, a comprehensive sweep by police in five cities found 17 suspected members. According to the interior minister, eight of the arrested were school teachers and another two were high-level school administrators.[citation needed]

Despite these arrests, Shining Path continues to exist in Peru, although it only operates sporadically.[citation needed] On December 22, 2005, Shining Path ambushed a police patrol in the Huánuco region, killing eight.[26] Later that day they wounded an additional two police officers. In response, President Alejandro Toledo declared a state of emergency in Huánuco, and gave the police the power to search houses and arrest suspects without a warrant. On February 19, 2006, the Peruvian police killed Héctor Aponte, who was believed to be the chief military commander of Shining Path. After the killing, the minister of the interior said that he believed that Shining Path would be defeated.[citation needed]

Notes

  1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online, "Shining Path." Available online, accessed September 10, 2006.
  2. ^ US Department of State, "Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)" October 11 2005. Available online Accessed 1 February 2006.
  3. ^ The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. pp. 17. Gorriti, Gustavo trans. Robin Kirk, The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill and Londo, 1999 (ISBN 0-8078-4676-7).
  4. ^ "Ataque terrorista en Tarata." Archived online Accessed February 1 2006
  5. ^ Burt, Jo-Marie. "The Shining Path and the Decisive Battle in Lima's Barriadas: The Case of Villa el Salvador, pp 291 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).
  6. ^ Manrique, Nelson. "The War for the Central Sierra," pp. 211 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).
  7. ^ Del Pino H., Ponciano. "Family, Culture, and 'Revolution': Everyday Life with Sendero Luminoso," pp. 179 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).
  8. ^ Degregori, Carlos Iván. "Harvesting Storms: Peasant Rondas and the Defeat of Sendero Luminoso in Ayachucho," pp. 133 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).
  9. ^ Smith, Michael L. "Taking the High Ground: Shining Path and the Andes," pp. 40 in Shining Path of Peru, ed. David Scott Palmer. 2nd Edition. St. Martin's Press: New York, 1994. (ISBN 0-312-10619-X)
  10. ^ Degregori, Carlos Iván. "Harvesting Storms: Peasant Rondas and the Defeat of Sendero Luminoso in Ayachucho," pp. 152 in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995, ed. Steve Stern, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1998 (ISBN 0-8223-2217-X).
  11. ^ La Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. "La Masacre de Lucanamarca (1983)." 28 August 2003. Available online in Spanish Accessed February 1 2006.
  12. ^ ibid.
  13. ^ ibid.
  14. ^ ibid.
  15. ^ La Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. "Ataque del PCP-SL a la Localidad de Marcas (1985)." Available online in Spanish Accessed February 1 2006.
  16. ^ La Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. "Press Release 170." Available online Accessed February 1 2006.
  17. ^ Legislative Decree No. 741. Available online Accessed February 1 2006.
  18. ^ Army of Peru. "Proyectos y Actividades que Realiza la Sub Dirección de Estudios Especiales." 2005. Available online in Spanish Accessed February 1 2006.
  19. ^ La Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. "¿Cuántos Peruanos Murieron? Estimación del Total de Víctimas Causadas Por el Conflicto Armado Interno Entre 1980 y el 2000." 28 August 2003. Available online in Spanish Accessed September 20 2006.
  20. ^ ibid.
  21. ^ Laura Puertas, Inter Press Service. "Peru: 20 Years of Bloodshed and Death." 29 August 2003. Available online Accessed February 1 2006.
  22. ^ BBC News. "Peru Captures Shining Path Rebel." November 9, 2003. Available online. Accessed September 18, 2006.
  23. ^ The New York Times. "Pipeline Workers Kidnapped." June 10, 2003. Available online. Accessed September 18, 2006.
  24. ^ Americas.org "Gas Workers Kidnapped, Freed." Available online.
  25. ^ Issue Papers and Extended Responses. Available online. Accessed September 18, 2006.
  26. ^ The New York Times. "Rebels Kill 8 Policemen" December 22, 2005. Available onlne. Accessed September 18, 2006.

Fiction

See also

References

  • The Monkey's Paw: New Chronicles from Peru, Kirk, Robin, The University of Massachusetts Press: Amherst, MA, 1997 (ISBN 1-55849-108-2)
  • "Terrorist Group Profiles", Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School.
  • "Coup against Shining Path", La República (Lima), 13 November 2003.
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